Tefillin or not tefillin... that is the question...

Tefillin

Tefillin, or not tefillin, that (with apologies to Mr. Shakespeare), is the question. That it should even be a question for me surprises me, but there it is, and it won’t go away. So I do what I usually do with something that’s puzzling or disconcerting me in some way. I puzzle on it some more, toss it around in my mind, question it, and even challenge it. I try to approach these things with some sort of logic, and so my first step is to just find out about tefillin. Here’s what I know.

Tefillin are a set of small leather boxes, with leather straps so that one of them can be wrapped around your arm (most often the left, because that is for most people their weaker arm), and the other can be wrapped around your head. They contain scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, to remind us to observe God's commandments, and are worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers.

Tefillin are sometimes called phylacteries, a word derived from the ancient Greek phylakterion, which means a safeguard. It seems possible that the Greeks misunderstood tefillin to be some sort of amulet or charm, which they are not. Rather, they represent for observant Jews a physical connection to God. The Hebrew word tefillin is related to the word tefilah (prayer) and the Greek term was not used in Jewish circles.

Like most things to do with prayer, men are obligated to wear tefillin (we call it 'laying tefillin' or 'wrapping tefillin') from the time of their Bar Mitzvah, but women are not. There are some who argue that the lack of obligation incumbent on women in this mitzvah is actually a prohibition, and that women should not wear them. However, there are women who do take on the obligation and who lay tefillin regularly. Early Jewish Halacha (law) allowed women to take on the obligation of wearing tefillin, but this custom was generally discouraged, and eventually this discouragement became active exclusion, especially amongst Ashkenazi Jews.

Modern Orthodox Judaism holds that it is permissible for women to wear tefillin, though it is generally discouraged. Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism allow women to wear tefillin, and in fact, many in Conservative Judaism encourage the practice.

The hand-tefillin, or shel yad, is placed on the upper arm, with the strap wrapped around the arm, hand, and fingers; the head-tefillin, or shel rosh, is placed above the forehead, where your hairline would begin, with the strap going around the head and over the shoulders. The Torah commands that tefillin should be worn to serve as a "sign" and "remembrance" that God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt.  Tefillin are wrapped in a particular pattern, and one cannot just put them on without being taught to do so correctly.

Bobbi & Greg learning how to wrap tefillin

The obligation of tefillin is Biblically ordained and is mentioned four times in Torah: twice when recalling the Exodus from Egypt - "And this shall serve you as a sign on your hand, and as a reminder on your forehead, in order that the Teaching of the Lord may be in your mouth - that with a mighty hand the Lord freed you from Egypt." (Exodus 13:9); and "And so it shall be as a sign upon your hand, and as a symbol on your forehead that with a mighty hand the Lord freed us from Egypt." (Exodus 13:16)

And it's mentioned twice in the Shema passages: "Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead" (Deuteronomy 6:8) and "Therefore, impress these My words upon your very heart: bind them as a sign upon your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead..." (Deuteronomy 11:18)

The Shema, in case you're wondering, is one of the most important prayers in all of Jewish tradition - "Shema Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ehad," is its beginning. That means "Hear Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One." The entire prayer is much longer, but it talks about the unity of the one God, and how Jews, as the people of the Covenant, are obligated to remember God and God's blessings upon us and care of us.

The idea, of course, is that we are meant to be engrossed in Torah – in thinking about it, living our lives according to its mitzvot, learning from it, sharing it with our children. And while the original scribes may have understood these verses to be more metaphorical in nature, the rabbis determined that the best way to be mindful constantly of God’s covenant with the Jewish people and our obligations to that covenant would be this tangible, physical reminder.

I think that I can be engrossed in Torah without taking on another mitzvah – or to be more precise, I have thought this to be the case. After all, I’ve taken on mitzvot quite happily that I didn’t imagine would ever be important to me. I keep kosher… I wear a tallis… if I miss synagogue, it’s because I’m sick, or I’m not in town (and if I’m not in town, but am in a place where there’s a synagogue, then I am there!)… I observe and celebrate the holidays and mark them all as special. So do I need tefillin? Do I even want them? I don’t know yet … but they are very much on my mind.

My arm in tefillin...

For Leah, Who is One Today

On your birth day, snow was falling in early morning dark
Today, it’s raining

On your birth day, we who already loved you
Finally got to meet you

On your birth day, there were other birth days, too
Your Eema, your Abba, and so many whose hearts are filled with you

On your birth day, you were impossibly tiny in hands
That felt clumsy just holding you

Today, you show signs of the little girl
Who soon will be running around the house

On your birth day, you knew Eema’s and Abba’s voices
Today, you beam and chatter to everyone you love

On your birthday, you became your Eema’s world
Today, we see that the world really is yours,
And we’re discovering it anew right along with you

On your birth day, we kissed you and cuddled you
Today, you seek us out to offer your own sweet kisses

On your birth day, our lives changed forever
Today, we cannot imagine life without you

Happy, happy birthday, beautiful Leah!

Do Not Go Gentle...

Dylan Thomas wrote

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
                               (“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” 1951)

He wrote the verses for his father, a former military man who was growing weak and frail with old age, a condition familiar to many who have cared for aging parents – and one that will become uncomfortably familiar to many of us as our own years accumulate. Thomas meant to exhort his father to fight against the ravages of age, to try to become strong and vital once more; like many of us, it hurt and probably frightened him to see the father who’d been physically powerful and a commanding presence become someone who was now going blind and unable to care well for himself. The failing health of a parent is not only a distressing event for adult children – because, really, we’re never completely ready to be without our parents, no matter how much we understand that this is the way life works; it is also a sometimes unwanted reminder of our own frailty and finite worth.

Today, I found an article in The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/22/AR2009122202489.html) describing the last two decades of a pair of sisters - Clarice "Classie" Morant was 104 years old, and her younger sister, Rozzie Laney, was 92. Both women had been widowed for decades, and neither of them had had any children. For the past 20 years, the article explained, Classie, the older sister, had been caring for Rozzie, who had Alzheimer’s Disease. She had made a promise to her sister that she would never leave her, would always take care of her, and she kept that promise, up to the day that Rozzie died quietly, in her own bed, on New Year’s Eve 2008.

The sisters had nieces and nephews, who helped them to stay in their own home and out of a long-term care facility, by bringing them to appointments as they were required, by checking in every day by phone, and by visiting regularly. The physical part of Rozzie’s day-to-day care was handled by a caregiver (who herself was near retirement age), and although Rozzie could no longer communicate in any intelligible way, Classie spent hours talking to her and just loving her. Except for the presence of a caregiver, and her sister’s bed in a downstairs sunroom converted to that purpose, the women lived together as many people do – quiet lives, domestically-centred, and relatively content.

The article was accompanied by two photo essays, both of which are beautiful (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/12/31/GA2009123101687.html and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/05/08/GA2009050803459.html). Reading the article, looking at the photographs that accompanied it, listening to the audio tracks with the photo essays, I found myself wondering what my old age would be like. It’s not inconceivable, for instance, that I should live to a ripe old age – it’s not that longevity runs in my family. In fact, it does not. But neither are we prone to dying young. There have been people in my family who died much too young (an uncle on my father’s side, an aunt on my mother’s); but equally, there have been people who lived well into old age (an aunt on my father’s side who died at 92). I do come from a family of dubious genetic inheritance (heart disease, primarily, is of concern, as is hypertension), but I mitigate my risk factors: I don’t smoke, I drink in great moderation, I exercise (though not as much as I should), and I try to make healthy food choices. I have a spiritual and intellectual life that serve to keep soul and mind alert and that I believe will ultimately serve me well in my dotage, though that’s not the reason I engage these things. I engage them simply because I enjoy them – that scientists, behaviourists, and the medical community identify these two things as fundamental to a healthy old age is simply the proverbial icing on the cake.

As I get older, though, I wonder more about what my old age will bring. Will I be healthy? Will I, like my parents, wind up unable to care for myself and dependent upon others to do even the most basic of tasks for me? I already know that I would hate that – not so much because of the idea of being a burden on anybody, to be honest; but like my mother, the loss of dignity involved when someone else (anyone else) has to help you to get dressed, or to bathe, or to go to the toilet, is terrifying to me. As well, I, like many people, tend to be a bit of a control freak about my own life, and my person. I like being autonomous. I like making my own decisions about what to wear, where to go, what to watch on TV, what music to listen to, when to go to bed… when to roll over in bed, for goodness’ sake! What will my life be like if I am no longer that person?

There is a great tendency on the part of many to treat the elderly – particularly the disabled elderly – as if they’ve also suddenly lost their ability to think and to speak for themselves. I remember well being very angry when out shopping with my mother in the last year of her life, when she had to use a wheelchair because she could no longer walk following a stroke, because clerks in department stores would address me, when she was clearly the person making the purchase. I was always polite to them (my mother raised me well!) but always pointed out that it was, in fact, the woman in the wheelchair who had the disposable income and was making the purchase, and that they should address her. And when we left the store, purchase in hand, I invariably railed about it to my mother, because I was so insulted for her. I knew how much she felt she had lost with the stroke, and it angered me that suddenly she had also apparently become invisible.

My mother eventually wound up in a long-term care facility herself. She was very angry about it and felt more than a little betrayed by her children, who had “put” her there. We were ourselves guilt-struck about the decision to make this arrangement for her, but honestly, there was no other way. There were 3 of her 5 adult children living here, all of whom had outside employment and could not be at home with her during the day. Two of us had partners who also worked outside the home, and as for me, I was a single parent, working full-time and also in grad school. We cobbled together care as well as we could, employing caregivers to come in to be with her initially for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening (wake-up and bedtime, essentially). We would be with her for as many intervening hours as we could, and we tried to make sure that weekends were spent more with family than with caregivers (though we did, in effect, become her caregivers as well).

Our mother’s physical care needs grew ever-greater, though, as her condition deteriorated, and the cost of caregivers, who were now needed almost 24/7, became prohibitive. Even had we been able to afford the many thousands of dollars each month which it would have cost to keep her in her little apartment, at this stage, it wasn’t the best choice because her medical needs were growing more pronounced as well. Simply, she had to be within easier reach of medical attention. She lived in the long-term care facility (I hate ‘nursing home’) for just about a full year before she died. Although she had been sick for several years, and we knew that she would not miraculously get better, her death, though ultimately peaceful, still felt sudden.

And so now, at what we might diplomatically term the midpoint of my life, I find myself wondering what the end of it might look like. I have a wonderful daughter who says, to my protest, that she will never ‘put you in a nursing home.’ While I appreciate the sentiment, my daughter is 22 as I write this, and the last thing on earth that I want is for her to become my caregiver by the time she hits 40, and given genetics, it’s not inconceivable. I’ve told her for years (most especially those years during which we lived out my mother’s last years) that when I become unable to care for myself, the only reasonable choice to be made is not whether a long-term care facility, but rather, which one. I don’t want my daughter bathing me, or diapering me, and I know from experience what it feels like to be the daughter who does it. It breaks two hearts.

And yes, I know that she would do that for me as I did it for my mother – with great care and greater love, protecting as much of my tattered dignity as she could. She would do for me, as I did for my mother, and care for me tenderly, remembering the hundred things that my hands had done for her as if they were on autopilot.

That’s only one aspect of old age, though, and that’s not even the frightening one. If it happens, then it happens, and while I will do as much as I can to take care of myself in a way to reduce my risk factors, doing that is no guarantor of success. The thing that frightens me is being old and alone, in a little apartment, seeing few people, and being poor. It’s difficult to make a retirement plan when more than half your working life is spent as a single parent, generally with not enough money for living, much less for saving. I’ll have a pension, I hope – unless the Canada Pension Plan goes bankrupt by the time I need it. But there is what they call superannuation from my workplace which, cobbled together to CPP, should allow me at least to live. The question of how well I will live is an interesting one. I make jokes about being able to afford only the no-name cat food (not for a cat, either), but they’re tinged with a wee bit of anxiety, because what if that is what my reality will be in my old age? I don’t anticipate a retirement full of travel, or a subscription to the symphony; I worry that it’s going to be a subsistence existence. Should I retire from the federal government at the end of my working life, then I will at least have retiree medical benefits, which will be a help should I need greater than average care.

What I do know is that if I am well enough to keep out of a long-term care facility, it is almost certain that I will not live with any of my sisters, or with my brother. It’s not that I don’t love them, or that they don’t love me; rather, it’s that they have their lives, and I have mine. We don’t actually take care of each other now, so why would I expect that to change when I’m 75 or 80? What if the shoe were on the other foot – would I care for an elderly brother or sister to keep them out of a long-term care facility? Well, yes, I believe I would – on the other hand, my siblings also have spouses, so it’s unlikely that they will need me, even if I am the healthy one of the lot of us (that in itself might also be questionable, but I am the youngest!).

My friend Andrea and I have talked about this, and we each agree that we can picture ourselves as little old ladies, living together in a small house, and taking care of each other in the way that friends do. Our children would come to visit us, and perhaps we would go to visit them as well, but our lives, we imagine, could be bound to one another through choice and not necessity. We each agree that barring the possibility of by that time having established a long-term romantic relationship with some as yet unknown man, the only way to have more than a subsistence existence when we are old is to live with someone else. Andrea and I have a lot in common and enjoy doing many of the same things, so in theory this could work… but I’m not really going to know until the time comes. Perhaps right now, it’s just a bit of a comfort to have this possibility as an option – though I’m not sure whether or not it’s truly realistic.

Robert Browning wrote

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
                                                   ("Rabbi Ben Ezra," 1864)


And so my question, then, is… what of those who have nobody with whom to grow old? Do they become invisible as they eke out a meagre existence, marking time until they die? And without some sort of financial security, how is anything else possible?

Rocking on a snowy evening

 I came home from work early today, because the first real storm of winter was brewing. It was very cold, and windy, and the snow – though not yet heavy – was blowing. So firstly, I recognize what a privilege it is to be able to come home when the weather looks threatening. There are a lot of people who would have to stay right where they were until their usual close of business, and I did not.


Then, there’s the fact that I got a ride home. Actually, the ride home is the reason I could leave early, because my friend Maggie stopped by in her car to see if I could leave. I had already decided that I wouldn’t walk home this afternoon, anyhow, because the weather was pretty miserable; but now, I didn’t need to worry about the bus, either.

In the car, Leah was asleep in her snowsuit, having had a pretty full day, what with playgroup at the synagogue and running around with Eema. When we got home, I got her out of her snowsuit (which my own daughter had worn what seems like centuries before) and brought her upstairs with a bottle, so that we could have a cuddle and she would have a chance to get back to sleep.

As I sat there rocking her, listening to her singing her sweet little song, I felt an amazing sense of connection – not just to this beautiful baby girl and to her mother, but to my days of young motherhood, when I rocked my own baby to sleep. Leah would occasionally squirm upright, discarding the bottle in favour of some kisses, which was just fine by me.

We sat there rocking and snuggling, nuzzled into each other, listening to the wind blowing outside, Leah taking all this as no less than her due – as indeed, she should; and me, for my part, sitting there realizing that this connection was to much more than my own life. My connection seemed to extend to every mother and every baby, and I found myself thinking sadly about babies I’d seen in newspaper articles recently whose mothers could not care for them, about babies who were hungry, and mothers who were hopeless.

As I rocked, Leah safely nestled in my arms not quite asleep, my heart filled with the bliss that comes from just hanging out with a small soul when there is not a single other thing in the world you needed to do or would rather do; but at the same time, I ached for those other mothers – the mothers who were not ready to be mothers and made other choices for their babies. The mothers who were not ready to be mothers and who did not know it, parenting without the resources or even interest that their children deserved. The mothers of Haiti, many of whom became mothers through violent rape or coerced sex. One of these mothers, interviewed by a journalist a few days ago, spoke of hating the man who had raped her and discovering, much against her will, that she had come to love her tiny son, the son for whom she was unable to provide even the basic necessities of life.


Mirlande Lewis, Port-au-Prince,
with her 3-week old son, the
product of a gang rape.
(Deborah Baic, Globe & Mail)


I thought about mothers whose children were half-grown, but who had in one way or another become disconnected from them. Mothers whose children I met a very long time ago, when I worked at a long-term shelter for homeless youth. I didn’t know those mothers, but I remember that some of their children spoke of being disposable – they considered themselves throwaways, and sometimes, sadly, they were correct.

I thought about children who were out in today’s miserable weather and hoped that they would be out only long enough to get home safely to where it was warm. I hoped that they had somewhere warm to go, and that they would be with people who loved them.

I realized that my connection to Leah was more than a connection to a single little girl I have grown to love. My connection was to every mother and every baby, back to the very first mother and baby, and I realized that more than anything, women are sisters, even when we don’t know one another. We share experiences, even when share nothing else, not language nor place nor living situation. Loving Leah was (and is) about more than just loving Leah. It is about love itself, and right now, the power having gone out in the storm, the living room lit by just a few candles and the light of my laptop, the temperature in here cooler than I wish it would be, I am surrounded by love. With all my heart, I wish that all children in the world were as loved as those I have loved.

Remembrance Day

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada, and I did what I have done every year I've been in Halifax on November 11.  I got up early (for a day off work), got dressed, made sure that my poppy was on my coat, and headed off to the Grand Parade Square downtown.  It was gratifying to see so very many people heading in the same direction as I was going - they move differently on Remembrance Day than on ordinary days.  There is a different purpose to the walk, and you can see it.  You can almost feel it in the air.

There have been many veterans in my family - some are (or were) veterans of war, while others have lives that involved military service.  Both my parents, now deceased, were veterans of WW II, so Remembrance Day was taken pretty seriously in our house.  When we were children, it was a cool thing in many ways, because our parents marched with other Legionnaires and past service members in the parade that went from our local Legion club to the Cenotaph.  We didn't think so much then about what it was we were experiencing, and yet, we knew that it was about remembrance.

Today, as I stood there, weeping my way through "Abide With Me," wondering why more people weren't singing, I realised that this month will be the 20th anniversary of my father's death.  That means that if he were still alive, he would've been 92 years old at this Remembrance Day service.  He would've been one of the oldest surviving veterans - their numbers get smaller and smaller every year.  My mother, had she not died in 2003, would have been 88 years old.  There are people at my synagogue who are about the ages of my parents.  We tend to revere them - they've generally been through more, experienced more, than we are ever likely to know.  And I realised today that while I do respect them, of course, what I feel for them is more like the love I can no longer share with my own parents.  These are who my parents might have been, after all.

November is a tough month.  My daughter and I have said - only half-jokingly - for years now that we ought to just skip November.  It is a month of so very much remembrance that hearts feel bruised when it finally draws to a close, just in time to take a breath and recognise that holidays are about again, and for me and my siblings to remember (as if we could forget) that we have no parents with whom to share the holidays.  November is a month of remembrance, and hurried phone calls, and death, and funerals.  But I know that even if I could skip it, I really wouldn't. 

I have so much more to remember now - not just veterans of earlier wars, but veterans of current wars.  Not just my parents, but friends' parents who have died.  Friends and family who are currently serving in the military, whether they are in combat theatre or not, are much on my mind, and I pray that we'll never have to find out the hard way what war really feels like.  I remember and pray for the safety of the almost-adult and adult children of my friends who have chosen military service.

Remembering is somewhat a sacred obligation to me.  I could no more skip Remembrance Day than I could pluck out my own eyes.  I remember because I love and have loved, and because there are still soldiers and sailors and air force personnel who are injured or who die on foreign soil, working to promote the democratic ideals that I take for granted.

There have been people around - peace activists, I imagine - giving away white poppies as a counter to the red ones sold on behalf of the Royal Canadian Legion.  Their feeling is that red poppies glorify war, and I will never understand this.  If they believe that, then they've missed the point altogether.  I'm sharing Halifax editorial cartoonist Mike De Adder's contribution to Remembrance Day 2010, because I believe he's got it just about right.

And today, just like every Remembrance Day in my life, I have marked the day with prayer and silence.  And at the going down of the sun, I have remembered.

Seymour & Jesse Skinner, home for a visit from the war... Jesse was my wonderful father.



Michael De Adder - November 10, 2010



Post-Thanksgiving...

Candace & Bronwyn at Thanksgiving Dinner

Bronwyn (still in her hospital 'negligee') checking out what's left of her car...

Me with the gorgeous girl who's been filling my heart since before she was even born...

Every year since she was small enough to offer a thought, my daughter and I have shared a Thanksgiving tradition of actually giving thanks, out loud, before we pick up fork and knife to get into the turkey sitting on the table.  This year, Bronwyn and I shared Thanksgiving with her lovely partner, Candace; with our friends Maggie & David and their sweet baby Leah (to whom I am surrogate Auntie Bobbi, thank you very much!); and Maggie & David's friend Murray.

Bronwyn asked me quietly before dinner whether we were going to do 'that thing,' which I understood immediately in Mummy/daughter shorthand to mean that she wanted to go 'round the table and hear what people were grateful for in their lives.  I was tickled that even as a young adult, this was not too hokey a thing to do, and I was eager to say YES.   Unsurprisingly, we all have things for which we are grateful, and a few of them are right here...

I am grateful that we were all around that table this Thanksgiving.  Because we might not have been.  Bronwyn and Candace were in a pretty serious car accident 2 weeks earlier - the car was totalled, and Candace had to have surgery to have steel plates put in her arm to repair a compound fracture.  Bronwyn was battered and bruised and had plenty of cuts from broken glass, but physically, that was the worst of it.  I cannot imagine a world in which my beautiful girl is not dancing around somewhere, doing Bronwyn-type things, and loving people, as she does.  I cannot imagine a time when I might see her smiling face only in a photo, or to remember the sound of her voice, her burbling laugh, rather than hearing them. 

I am grateful that the two beautiful Berners, Wylie and Ben, were not in the car, as they usually are.  On that day, the girls had decided not to take the dogs with them - 200 pounds of frightened dog flying around a car that was going head over heels into the woods could only have spelled disaster.

Bronwyn and Candace, too, expressed their own gratefulness for just being present, and being ok.  And for the family and "framily" (Bronwyn's word for "friends who are like family") who were there to help take care of them in those first few days after the accident.

We are all grateful for so many things - for family, friends, babies, loving hands that prepared the food we ate, and the hands that cleaned up after the meal.  And every day of her life, I have been grateful to be Bronwyn's mother.  But on this particular Thanksgiving, more than any other one in my life, I am grateful for the mere existence of my beautiful daughter, who fills my heart with a constant joy that is sometimes quite giddy and breathless.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation...

The air in Halifax feels very autumnal lately, particularly the last couple of days.  Days are quite warm, but it's clear that summer is drawing to a close, which makes me kind of sad.  Most of my summer has been taken up with Israel, which was entirely marvellous... I don't think there was really anything I didn't like there, and I'm finding it kind of hard to be back here.

I went to Israel at the beginning of July and first spent a couple of days in Haifa with my friends Mirjam and Avraham... they are utterly lovely people who treat me like family and take very good care of me when I'm with them.  I'd taken all kinds of pictures while I was there, including a LOT of Megiddo, but I'm afraid that I've deleted them permanently.  DUH.  I blame it on the new card reader that I bought when I went to Jerusalem... while I was trying to upload pics from the camera, I'm pretty sure that I deleted the Megiddo pics instead of saving them... unless, of course, I saved them somewhere ELSE and simply have not found them.  I'll continue to be hopeful until I've exhausted all possibilities.

I had almost a week on my own in Jerusalem before classes began at the Conservative Yeshiva, and spent lots of time sightseeing and exploring.  Hardly took a bus the whole time I was in Jerusalem (once, I think), and walked so much that I'm sure I must be 5 cm shorter now than I was when I arrived!

I davened Rosh Chodesh with Nashot HaKotel (Women of the Wall), at the Kotel in the Old City.  That was such an interesting experience that it deserves a spot of its own here, which I will do later.  And I marched in the Pride Parade on 29 July, which is also deserving of its own separate recounting.  And I studied Hebrew (faaaaaaaar from fluent...), and Torah.  I had some truly superior teachers and count myself blessed to have been able to spend this time there.

This time was different from other visits, because this time, I lived in an apartment, with one of the loveliest roomies ever.  Sam is a lawyer from Syracuse, NY, and we didn't know each other at all before we got there.  I hope we're going to be friends for a long, long time, because he's terrific.  It was fun after classes were over, often wandering Jerusalem with him, and discovering things together.  Did plenty of tourist stuff... the tunnel tour under the Western Wall, the Tower of David Light Show... Jerusalem International Film Festival... a concert by the Diwan Project... it was all just brilliant.

I didn't update the blog the whole time I was away, and probably should have ... now it will be a retrospective!  But when I get it done, it will have photos as well...